Nobrainer’s Think Tank

During a commercial break of the Clemson - NC St game on Sunday, I got stuck on PBS. PBS was showing an interview about disposable income. My attention was snagged when it was asserted that now with more families having two people in the workplace, we have seen disposable income decrease drastically.

So I watched the slow, painfully well pronounced interview progress to see what point they were getting to. I also realized that I hate TV interviews. One person sits there doing nothing exciting. Then every once in a while we get to see the interviewer smiling and nodding.

There was also the assertion that the cost of living was growing faster than wages.

Finally the interviewee, got to some numbers. Compared to 30 years ago we spend:
- 22% less on clothing
- 21% less on food
- 44% less on appliances, even though we have tons more appliances.

Not too shabby, eh? But those decreases in spending, don’t explain what they’re really trying to complain about: the lack of money put into savings.

Where is the money going? Compared to 30 years ago, we have seen
- 70% increase in mortgages
- 100% increase in health insurance
- going from 1 to 2 cars in the household
- childcare costs
- higher taxes

These “basic expenses” also referred to as “must haves” account for 75% of household spending. It used to be about 50%. The goal to reducing household debt, she says, is to get back to 50%, with 20% going to savings and 30% going for consumables (to be paid in cash). And Ms. Warren (missed her first name) works at Harvard Law School.

I disagree.

Even if we are already spending 20-40% less on consumables, you really don’t need a lot of that crap. While we may be spending less on clothes, we still probably have far more of them than we need. I think you can say the same thing about food, appliances, and what not.

So going to the 5 basic expenses, you can’t really reduce your taxes. Health insurance is probably not a good thing to scrimp on. Childcare costs? Well I don’t know much about them, but you gotta find someone to take care of your kid while you’re at work. Transportation costs can probably be reduced. Buying a new car is like throwing money away. It’s even worse when it’s a big new car.

But then the remainder is left to reduce the money spent on housing. The problem here, is that money spent for a house isn’t entirely going to disappear. Keeping interest payments down is a great thing. But Ms. Warren is mostly suggesting that in order to improve household savings, we need to re-allocate 25% of our spending, mostly away from our houses.

(this is pretty much where I finished this post on Sunday. Today I found the article that helps carry me through. (thanks OJ))

(more…)

Howard has a goal. And quite frankly, I don’t want to know what will happen if it isn’t met.

Note: This was the first in what became a series of posts about the purported benefits of adding acetone to gasoline. As such this is perhaps the least useful of all the posts I wrote. The most salient points are that only an extreme few are able able to get a 25+% increase in mileage and no one with any widespread credibility has been able to get significant improvements under laboratory conditions.

The original post continues below:

In a few instances, I have seen fark reference some work suggesting that adding small amounts of acetone to your fuel will increase your fuel mileage by up to 30%.

Today’s link goes to RealTechNews. That’s just the same information posted at PureEnergySystems. That information was written by a guy named Louis LaPointe. Both show the same graph, which is pretty non-descript. It’s the kind of graph that would earn you an F in most high school classes, let alone a college class with a professor like Leo Gaddis.

The links all use this same graph. It shows no data points. It does not tell us what kind of cars were used, although in one article it is explained that curve D is for a diesel engine. All the graph really tells me is that someone drew some pretty lines.

There really isn’t much methodology to be digested. Most of the information isn’t even brought close to your plate. The best you can get is that someone is adding acetone to their vehicles and basing the information off of runs done somewhere at 50 mph.

More links:
DIY Live
PureEnergySystems Wiki
FuelSaving.info

The DIY link is the same as the first 2 links but with less. The PES Wiki link involves numerous user testimonials, some good, some bad. It also took me to a link about calculating fuel mileage savings, which used an erroneous formula. (A hint: getting a 100% increase in mileage won’t reduce your fuel costs by 100%.)

There is some good information about being consistent while you test. But still, I don’t really trust individuals looking for results to give very good data. The article at fuelsaving.info is a counter to the pro-acetone group. I’m inclined to side with that article.

Here’s something that caught my eye:

Many products claiming to improve mileage are expensive and do not really help much. Others are fakes. For instance, a SMOOTH flow of air into a carburetor or injector is far better for mileage than turbulent air. Turbulence is bad. Yet many people deliberately introduce turbulent air into their engines. There are many silly myths floating around the car industry to fool the average person. Another is that cold intake air improves mileage. NO. Warm air improves mileage.

If I’m not mistaken, fluid flows much better under turbulence. Everyone from ship to airplane builders and golf ball designers know this. Per Parviz Moin and John Kim in the SEAS at UCLA:

In the cylinders of an internal-combustion engine, for example, turbulence enhances the mixing of fuel and oxidizer and produces cleaner, more efficient combustion.

Also, cold intake air, I believe should increase motor efficiency. The idea is that cold air is more dense. Thus each volume of intake air has a greater mass of oxygen. Oxygen, of course, is completely necessary for combustion of organic materials like gasoline. However, cold air will, due to its density, increase the air drag on a vehicle. So in real world conditions, there is a trade-off to be made.

So why should we trust Louis LaPointe?

FACTS. Absolute true facts. My Scan Gauge does not lie and neither do I. What data do these people show? Actual data. Actual test results.

Well his facts and test results aren’t that good. For example:

My 1995 Neon that is now 10 years old at 130,000 miles and runs with acetone all the time. It runs perfectly. Absolutely perfect. Just averaged 45 MPG IN TOWN last week. And just last weekend we averaged 50 to 73 MPG on a test run through Wisconsin with special mileage devices attached. Never had engine work.

50 to 73 MPG? That’s a huge variation. Is that for a whole trip? Is the 73 MPG just from that 1 mile where you tailgated an 18-wheeler? His FACTS, are pretty much anecdotal in my opinion.

Personally, I believe the guy is just try to sell the ScanGuage (Evan & Bear, you ought to offer to revamp their website). Damn near every link names this singular device and suggests that you should buy it to test your car.

Does acetone really work? I don’t have the guts to find out for myself. The risks of voiding a warranty, corroding my fuel system, or even spilling the acetone on my paint and ruining it are just too much for me to take.

If you are interested in improving your mileage, your best bet is still to be a good driver with a well maintained vehicle. Keep your tires inflated properly. Don’t run the AC. Keep your engine tuned. Don’t carry around unnecessary weight. Perhaps most importantly, accelerate and brake as slowly as possible. Gunning your engine and braking hard will probably do more to hurt your mileage than anything else. The key is to be gentle with the pedals. And remember, in this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

Well, I am bored and Doug @ Literal Barrage Agent Orange tagged me with a blog version of the chain mail. I think you have to add your own new four thing at the end, so if you play on add something new.

Four Jobs I’ve Had

1. Paper boy (Middletown Journal)
2. Busboy (Sara Jane’s, Bill Knapp’s, and Olive Garden)
3. Co-op (Bosch)
4. Research/teaching assistant (UVA)

Four Films I Can Watch Over and Over

1. Clue
2. Super Troopers
3. Old School
4. Stewie Griffin: The untold story

Four Places I’ve Lived

1. Ohio
2. Clemson, SC
3. Pendleton, SC
4. Charlottesville, VA

Four Current TV Shows I Enjoy

1. Family Guy
2. America’s Test Kitchen
3. Law & Order
4. Scrubs

Four Foods I Like

1. Cow
2. Pig
3. Chicken
4. Other animals not listed above

Four Places I’ve Vacationed

1. Cocoa Beach, Fl
2. Central Europe
3. Spartanburg, SC
4. Denver, CO

Four Websites I Visit Daily

1. fark
2. drudge
3. cafe hayek
4. brothersjudd

Four Things I’d Like to Do Before I Die

1. be a family man
2. have my own company
3. run my own country
4. shoot a round of golf under par

Four Things I Miss From College

1. JAGERBOMBS!
2. Always having a reason to drink
3. beer pong where getting drunk was way more important than winning
4. the old crappy frat quad

Four favorite drinks
1. Guinness
2. Jack & diet coke
3. Jagerbombs
4. PBR

Four People I am Tagging
The chain ends here

From a union backed report about the widening rich-poor income gap, via Russell Roberts:

Renwick [an economist with the union-backed Fiscal Policy Institute in New York] said the government “needs to continue its commitment to correcting the natural outcomes of the marketplace”

Or in my words, we must punish the successful and reward the losers. Otherwise only the best will get ahead in life.

W had some fun with the media recently, via Orrin Judd:

“Having my picture taken with someone doesn’t mean that I’m a friend with him or know him very well,” he said. “I’ve had my picture taken with you at holiday parties.”

[snip]

When a radio reporter asked the president again to never mind the photographs, just talk about lobbyists’ influence on the White House, Bush interrupted: “Easy for a radio guy to say.”

And this is a good way to lose your job as a campaign manager (again via Orrin Judd):

In a live call-in show on the Pennsylvania Cable Network, Seif told viewers that Scranton’s main opponent for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Lynn Swann, who is African American, was the “rich white guy in the campaign.”

Whoops.

Today the Weekly Standard took aim at the “High Church of Recycling.” I took interest for two reasons. First there was a post today on cvillenews.com. Charlottesville is just meeting the state minimum recycling rate of 25%. Other parts of the state aren’t even coming close. Secondly, I’m always interested in examining the true tradeoffs of recycling (which are typically not very good). Those tradeoffs are something I’d never really considered until reading The Economics of Public Issues, which I referred to yesterday.

One of the authors is Clemson econ professor Daniel Benjamin. So who is quoted repeatedly in the Weekly Standard piece? Clemson econ professor (and UVA grad — this post is really just tying all kinds of things together, isn’t it?) Daniel Benjamin.

(sidenote: slightly appalled but inspired by Benjamin’s email address, I have just requested clemson@virginia.edu. Damnit, denied already: “An alias cannot be a word or phrase that has meaning to other schools (for example, we will not assign the alias vatech to anyone here at U.Va.).” — talk about a poorly written guideline. We’ll see what they think about tiger@virginia.edu. Damn them! tiger is already in use.)

(sidenote #2: does anyone have BanTheWoohoo@clemson.edu or BanTheWoohoo@alumni.clemson.edu ?)

Anyway, back on track.

[Benjamin] adds that the total land area required to contain every scrap of this country’s garbage for the next 100 years would be only 10 miles square. The Nevada Policy Research Institute’s numbers are even more dramatic: an area 44 miles square and 120 feet deep would handle all of America’s garbage for the next millennium.

Do they mean 10 miles by 10 miles, or 10 square miles? Either way, I have often contended (admittedly perhaps unrealistically) that we should look at landfills like man-made mines. If we start to run out of stuff, we just have to go back to where we put it and dig it out.

This part is also a bit telling about mandatory recycling:

The truth, though, is that recycling is an expense, not a savings, for a city. “Every community recycling program in America today costs more than the revenue it generates,” says Dr. Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute.

A telling indicator is that cities often try to dump recycling programs when budgets are tight. As Angela Logomasini, director of risk and environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, points out in the Wall Street Journal, every New York City mayor has attempted to stop the city’s recycling program since it was begun in 1989.